Otoya Yamaguchi

In the USA version of Rodan Otoya's dubbed dialogue was unbearably stupid

charls carroll showing his support

October 12th, 1960 is a red-letter date in the history of political drama. Mere hours after Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe on his delegate desk at a Plenary Meeting of the UN General Assembly while having a conniption, 17-year-old nationalist Otoya Yamaguchi (山口 二矢) assassinated Japanese Socialist Party head Inejiro Asanuma with a wakizashi during a televised electoral rally.

In one of the greatest moments in Japanese broadcast television history, Yamaguchi—presumably energized by a diet of Yan Yan and innumerable viewings of jidaigeki films starring Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai—launched a running start off-camera, then slammed into and sucker-stabbed the politician as his thick dork glasses hilariously flew off of his head:

Amusingly, Otoya had co-starred in the Kaiju monster movie Sora no Daikaijū: Radon (空の大怪獣 ラドン)—or, as it was called in the shitty USA version, Rodan—just a few years earlier. Rodan was some kind of flame-throwing dinosaur who flew around Japan fucking shit up, destroying the cities of Sasebo and Yawata: but not Tokyo!